Mariner: An Open Letter From Cult Of Luna to Julie Christmas

Dear Julie Christmas,

Words cannot express the amount of gratitude we feel about working with you. People told us post metal was dead, and frankly, while we did feel quite confident about our last effort Vertikal, after that album we were completely drained. You can imagine our relief when after hitting so many dead ends in our practice space we met you online, and you were open to recording some vocal lines too! With you as our newfound muse we were able to overcome our writer’s block and get the creative juices flowing again with the mighty Mariner as a result.

We are well aware that we have humbled ourselves to be your backing band on Mariner. But it just felt so good to have you lead the way and take the helm. Shyly, you downplayed your own part initially with “A Greater Call,” a song that slowly builds up the tension the way we have always done, and you gradually formed a chorus and gained strength. That song is not really all that different from our previous wok, and to be honest it’s the lesser of the five for it. Fortunately from the second track “Chevron” on you took us by the hands and danced your crazy dances, and showered us with your genius poetry. We can only describe this collaboration as magical, the way you have no boundaries, no rules, and still have this “anything-goes” mentality seamlessly melt with our musical mold. A mold we thought was set in stone, but it became like wax in your hands, and while we completely followed your every move, you showed us a way to establish real beauty again. A thing that is very rare in music, let alone in heavy metal, and once again we would like to express our sincerest gratitude for this.

We are proud of ourselves and of Mariner, and we cherish its existence and the fact that we have walked in your shadow. However, our hearts are heavy now that we have come to its completion and apparently we have to go our separate ways again.

Frankly we feel completely lost, cast in darkness now your light has left us. What are we to do with ourselves without you to guide us? Why for that matter does it have to be this way? We know you are a mother and you think it is important to spend most of your time raising your children. But we can build our future around this, we feel we have no other choice now that we have found ourselves spellbound and with no other cause than to watch your every move.

So we -Cult Of Luna- have given it some serious thought, and we have decided to move in with you in Brooklyn. We will do the cooking and the cleaning and babysit your babies, we’ll get regular jobs and see to it that you and your family will have everything in abundance. As long as we can breathe the air you breathe and worship the ground you walk on. We can live with touring a little less, as long as we can learn all the Julie Christmas-ness there is to be taught and make sweet music with you for the rest of our time here on earth. You know Mariner was just the beginning, you actually feel the same way we do: that this was just a teaser for the people to get a glimpse of the sheer power that’s certainly to come. Surely you can’t believe this is all there is! Our lives have a lost all meaning without you. We spent our time crying and listening to Mariner while we burn our previous records on pale green bonfires.

Please Julie, we beg you, make another album with us. This was a life-altering experience for us and we do not wish to go back to the way things were before. We hope, we pray that these words reach you in wisdom and in health. Make the right decision, if not for us then for the sake of music lovers around the globe: make this collaboration a permanent force of nature.